Official VAIO SR Series Owners Thread

Actually, like you, I ordered the XFi expresscard sound card. Is it any good? Can I hook up a 5.1 system to it?

 

I'm not sure actually, I'm using it with a z2300 currently

Edit: oh and yeah the sound from the xfi expresscard is a LOT better than the built in realtek card

 

If i were to update ram, which type would i need?

 

I want to dual boot with XP. Is there a special way to do this? I just peeked at the guide here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=187998

 

Anyone have any other clues as to the differences between the 190 and 290? Other than the option to add an HDMI port (290), I still can't figure out what advantage the 290 has. They seem identical in specs.

I was going to buy a new, loaded SR290 for $1300, but when I saw a deal on an open box SR190 for $500, it just seemed too good to pass up.

Anyway, I'm supposed to pick up the open box 190 on Thursday afternoon, so if I'm going to change my mind and hold out for a 290, I need to get some opinions right away!

 

Just got my Black SR290. looks cool overall. lot of stickers to peel off and throw away. But overall it looks quite cool. I bet the Silver looks even better - but the extra 50$ can be spent elsewhere.

It has a WEI score of 4.7 for a P8400 2.26GHz, 3GB RAM, 320GB HDD (5400rpm) , ATI Radeon with HDMI .

Out of the box, it is running around 74-75 processes. Will be doing a clean install sometime this week and report back the progress.

 

No , three attempts and if you are not there, they will return it back. they wont even hold it for you to pick it up. It said so right on the box.

 

Anyone got real life pictures of titanium SR?

 

the only difference is that the 290 has HDMI port and the graphics card has 256mb of ram instead of 128

any DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) ram should work

 

what do you think about this deal I am about to order, is it possible to get this with a lower price?

For $1580

SR290
250 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [5400 rpm]
Standard Battery
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3470 with HDMI™ Output
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T9600 (2.80GHz)
Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit
2 GB DDR2-SDRAM (DDR2-800, 1GBx2)

 

probably not, since you picked the t9600 cpu
what are you going to use your laptop for?
that cpu is an overkill for a lot of things and its not really worth it..

 

other than P8600, T9400 and T9600 is out of the picture. since the perfromance of T9400 is close to P8600, an upgrade that is noticable is the T9600. I will be using this computer for video coding and research so the power of the cpu will be utilized.
I am going to upgrade the RAM to 4gb and the hard disk to 7200 rpm once I receive it.

what do you mean by an overkill, do you mean in terms of battery life or there is something else?

 

by overkill i mean like overpowering
but since you're gonna do video encoding stuff, the more powerful cpu seems necessary

 

TonytheTiger, do you have link for the newer drivers for audio, i just received my SR today and i must say beautiful machine, totally worth the wait, however music sounds quite bad, i read that you said updating drivers may help.

 

The forum won't let me post the Realtek Link. So I'll message you.

 

ftp://66.104.77.130/pc/audio/WDM_R210.exe

 

Wow awesome, thanks guys, if i buy the 4gb ram and i switch out my 2, how much would i be able to resell it for?

ah, the driver you gave me tonythetiger doesnt install, there was an error or somesort

 

not much. 20$ at most i guess

 

Hey Tony, is your hard drive the Seagate momentus one? Or is it from the factory?

 

I spent all day today trying to tweak vista like you said, and yet my processes are still up in the 70s. I uninstalled all of the non essential programs like the Office trial, liveonecare garbage, etc.

But I haven't yet touched the Sony programs yet because their names sound important like "Sony DVD Menu" or something. Is it ok to remove all of the Sony programs in the install/uninstall window? (Besides the obvious ones like power management etc)

 

You'll end up disabling Vista services that are not necessary, so that lowers the number of running processes on startup.

 

Ok so today I came home with an SR190 at the unbelievable open-box price of $540. I still can't believe it. That's with a 2.4Ghz core duo, 4 gigs of RAM and a 320 gig HD.

So far we can only see the difference between the 190 and 290 is the HDMI port and slightly better integrated graphics, so I'm wondering why the 290's WEI is so much higher! 4.7 vs 3.6 or so on the 190.

Also, they wanted to charge me $120 to downgrade the machine to XP, and that would not include any recovery discs.

Can I make a clean install of XP myself, that will keep the laptop functionality?

Thanks in advance and I look forward to being part of the SR club!

 

The 290 has a 256mb GPU.... but honestly as many have said before, don't listen to WEI scores, they're essentially useless. The only performance difference in the 190 vs. 290 series is the gpu bump, the hdmi port, and the option of bluray. but there is some truth to the wei score, i mean, if i am running the same game on a sr190 with ati vs. an sr290 with ati, the sr290 with the 256mb card WILL RUN BETTER(it wont be a massive increase in performance, but it is definetly there).

 

Have you checked out the tips and tricks in the windows forum? First page of it gives you instructions on all that. The two primary things i think you need to shut off are indexing(the process, the program, etc... multiple steps in this), you have to make sure windows update isnt searching/downloading updates everyday...because its a huge pain in the a**. Check out this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

and don't delete things that sound important, like vaio event service, etc. without first finding out what they do.... (which can be done on here... or the vista forum). I also recommend downloading CC cleaner and disabling various startup programs you don't use.....

 

just got a email, it was shipped and will be here on tuesday, then I will come back to see what I should delete or tweak

 

I need an advise regarding hard drive upgrade. I have a Hitachi 320gb 7200 rpm, is there any problem in upgrading the sr 160gb hard drive. Is it going to disable the shock protection (G-sensor).

 

Hey does your SR190 have the ATI graphics card? If it does it looks like you still haven't installed the driver for the graphics card.
3.6 seems a little too low.. I have a SR190 and my WEI is 4.7

 

it won't disable it.
the g-sensor is part of the laptop, and it's controlled by the VAIO control center

 

Hello ppl, i've just gotten my SR

I'm pretty pleased with it's overall performance but i have one problem.
Every night when i turn on my sr, i noticed that my hard disk size will shrink by 1 gb daily! What is taking up so much space ?! I dont think its windows updates as its all done, i didnt install anything new either. Do you guys know whats causing it?

Thanks!

 

Turn off Indexing and System Restore..
they take up a lot of space...

 

why not leave system restore on? sure it takes up some room, but its a good thing to have if your not a power user thats comfortable doing OS installs, slipstreaming, using regedit, troubleshooting, etc.

 

IMO the system restore is useless
it caused more troubles for me than anything else
But it might be useful to other people

 

First attempt to do a semi clean install of vista - failed. unlike the process mentioned in one of the threads, there was no 'launcher.exe' that I could kill to remove the bloat ware. instead I had to manually uninstall most of the programs. This bought down the processes from 75 to around 65-66. but still a far cry from the 45 processes that some of the clean installs have achieved.

On the bright side, i managed to partition the Hard drive through vista itself. and also used the vista tweak options to limit the disk usage to 15.8 GB for Vista. (down from 25GB with full bloat ware and options turned on)

 

Thanks guys i'll try that.
Btw, isnt there a fixed amount that system restore can take up ? once the limit is reached, the older restore points will be replaced with new ones ?

 

Yeah, but the fixed amount is pretty huge

 

what did you uninstall? i want to also bring the processes donw a little, so far, i only uninstalled the aol stuff, the windows live care thing, microsoft office trial, and quickbook

 

Also, when buying a mouse, (power saving-wise) which is better?

 

Oh plenty,

From what I remember -

-Office 2007 trial
-Office Powerpoint 2007 viewer
-Office 2007 compatability
-Quickbooks (Dont need it)
-WinDVD (Windows has a DVD Software - why do I need another)
-All Vaio Content / entertainment / media / music options (Windows Media center works for me) (there were a bunch of Media analyzers that I got rid off as well.
-Vaio Wireless Utility
-Vaio Welcome Center, Survey etc

Okay its not a comprehensive list, but the following is what I have retained as of now from the sony/viao list.

-Sony Picture Utlitiy (Can be removed, but I hope to get a Sony handycam sometime down the lane so thought it might be useful)
-Sony Video Shared Library
-Vaio Care
-Vaio Control Center
-Vaio Data Restore Tool (can be removed, but I thought would be handy for some restoration of lost data)
-Vaio Event Service (aparently needed for some buttons i believe)
-Vaio Help and Support (you can remove if it you want to)
-Vaio Mode Switch (need it for those nifty buttons on the hinge)
-Vaio Original Funciton Setting (dont know what it does, but retained it)
-Vaio Power Management (need it for battery)
-Vaio Update 4
-Vaio Wallpaper Contents (can be removed, but decided to keep it for the wallpaper colelction)


Stuff that I would probably get rid off in the future.
-The ArcSoft Webcam software
-Roxio
-Viao Care / Help / Power Management and Wallpaper contents
-Music Transfer (I have no idea what this is, but would like to get rid of this as well).

 

ohh btw what does the vaio wireless utility do?

Ahh i think my "F" and "J"keys is loose, and i just got this 3 days ago, not sure loose lose, but it seems looser than the other key. I didnt notice it till today, but it is just in my head, or is it?

 

It seems useless, I think it helps you set up Wireless or something, but you can just use the Windows utility or the Intel utility.

 

it doesn't really matter how much stuff you uninstalled
what matters the most is what services did you turn off
check out this page for what services are needed and what are unneeded
http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

 

anyone know how to fix squeaky keeys? i m noticing that my "I" key squeaks

 

Is there an option to turn off the DVD drive on battery? I could not find one under Vaio Power Management. If not, would disabling the device do the same job?

 

Ok my WEI on my SR190 is 3.8, but that's because it's using the lowest score (my 3D graphics score) as the base number (I don't have an ATI chip). All my other scores were over 5.

And this was after a clean install. But there are still 74 processes running, I guess I'll have to look through this thread and figure out what I can un-install to get that number down.

Is there an FAQ for that, or can someone point me to a good "how-to" post? Sort of a "here's what you should do as soon as you get your SR190/290."

 

really? after a clean install there was still 70+ processes?

 

sigh, i just called sony support and they will fix my squeaky keyboard, customer support was great for me

 

when i get my sr i want 5 processes max and no squeak

 

I managed to get my processes down to 55. The only functionality I scarified (which I didn't like anyway) was the mode switch. If you would like some assistance let me know.

 

when using the recovery disc that i burned using the vaio recovery, do i jyust press f8 and boot from it? and it will make my hard driver back to how i first got it? with drivers and everything?

 

New SR190 owner. 25% off a demo at the local Sony Gallery saved me a bundle. Just finished reading all November and December posts in this great thread. Thanks! (Especially for the link to upgrade the sound driver. Much improved.)

Now, a battery question. Even after tweaking the power save settings, I'm confident I can squeeze anything close to the 4-5 hours the salesman represented. Maybe it's a result of the battery being used in the store for a few weeks as a demo or maybe it's settings but this battery can't fly more than a couple of hours. If I'm going to always carry a second battery, which do you recommend? Standard or extended? I know it's a weight trade off. Assume that I'll almost never fly more than 4 hours watching movies. Would two standard batteries do the job?

Thanks in advance.

(Also, if you've figured out how to link the Switch keys to iTunes Pause/Play or Next Track, I'd love to know the secret.)